Let's face it, the past year has been tough on the IT industry. Although leading indicators show the economy to be improving, the news remains bleak for IT professionals. The harsh reality is that when times are bad, the IT industry is one of the first to take hits and one of the last to recover.

When looking for a job in this type of market, experience plays a more important role than certification. Nevertheless, many out-of-work IT professionals face the realization that their job skills have stagnated and that their education must catch up. The double-edged sword is that you must look for ways to gain more experience, particularly if you're trying to break into the IT industry, but you also must be diligent about your education and certifications so that your skill set remains as marketable as possible. If you're looking for work in a job market that's flooded with well-qualified people, you want to be as nimble as possible.

Diversification is a term that commonly arises when you discuss retirement portfolios, but you can take a similar approach to your skill set. Obviously, certain high-end IT specialists will always be in demand because few others possess their skills, but the vast majority of IT professionals aren't in that situation. Look for skills that will complement those you already have and examine job postings to learn what types of skills are in demand. You can also read industry publications to get a feel for where technology is going and visit IT discussion forums such as CertTutor.net Live! to network with other IT professionals. For example, consider some ways that a Windows administrator (e.g., one who works with Windows 2000 or Windows NT 4.0) might diversify his or her skill set to gain an edge in the job market:

Learn multiple OS platforms, concentrating on systems integration. For example, learn Linux and a UNIX OS such as Sun Microsystems' Solaris and become an expert at making heterogeneous environments work. Linux+ is a good certification to start with, and Sun offers multiple Solaris certifications. Novell NetWare still has a significant piece of the market, so consider the CNA and CNE certifications.

Become an expert in a server-application category. For example, become a messaging specialist by learning Microsoft Exchange Server, Lotus Notes, and GroupWise. Alternatively, add database skills by studying Microsoft SQL Server and Oracle. Try not to concentrate on specific products as much as platforms and broad application categories.

Learn about the hardware that Win2K Server and NT Server run on. Compaq, IBM, and other vendors offer hardware certifications. But even more important than certifying in a vendor’s product line is learning about server concepts such as storage arrays, clustering, SMP, and redundant systems. Become more than the person who deals with the network OSs—become the person who can design and implement server solutions.

As you can see, many possibilities exist for the average Windows administrator. Other jobs require different skills, but in most cases, you can map out skills to complement your existing ones instead of heading in a whole new direction. This step not only makes the best use of the time you spend studying and certifying, but also maximizes the value of your current skill set by concentrating your skills into a field of study, which is more useful than having a hodge-podge of skills that don’t work well together.

The economy isn't especially IT friendly right now, so IT professionals need to be even more diligent than usual about maintaining their skills and being able to react quickly to market changes. As the job market recovers, a specialized but flexible skill set puts you in a position to succeed.

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2. NEWS & VIEWS

MYSQL AB DEVELOPS NEW CERTIFICATIONS

MySQL AB announced two new certifications, MySQL Core Certification and the MySQL Professional Certification, for MySQL, an open-source database application. For more information, see the MySQL AB Web site.
http://www.mysql.com/training/certification.html

TEAM DATABASE ANNOUNCES VENDOR-NEUTRAL CERTIFICATION

Team Database plans to offer a new vendor-neutral database certification. Similar to the vendor-neutral Linux+ certification, the Team Database certification will concentrate on all aspects across all database platforms for design, implementation, and administration. For more information, see the Team Database Web site.
http://www.teamdatabase.com

MORE ABOUT THE NEW CISCO SYSTEMS EXAM

Cisco Systems has released more information about its new Multi-Service Switching Specialist Certification, a certification that follows on from the popular Cisco Certified Network Professional (CCNP). For more information, see the following CertTutor.net Live! discussion thread:
http://certtutor.net/forums/messageview.cfm?catid=76&threadid=34013

3. CERTIFIABLE(contributed by Jonathan Bischke, jonb@certtutor.net)

Questions for Exam 70-210

Welcome to Certifiable, your exam-prep headquarters. Here you'll find questions about some of the tricky areas that are fair game for the certification exams. This week's questions cover topics for Exam 70-210: Installing, Configuring, and Administering Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional.

Question 1
Last year, Enrious bought a Windows 2000 Professional workstation, a Pentium II 350MHz machine with 128MB of RAM, an EIDE hard disk, a NVIDIA GeForce2 graphics card, and a 100Mbps NIC. Recently, Enrious noticed that performance slows markedly when he runs resource-intensive applications. Over the course of a few days, Enrious runs several performance counters. The results are as follows:

LogicalDisk, % Free Space: 7%

Memory, Pages/Sec: 2

Physical Disk, % Disk Time: 5%

Processor, % Processor Time: 4%

Which of the following actions would most likely improve the performance of Enrious's workstation? (Choose the best answer.)

Question 2
Oksana works for a company that plans to deploy 150 Windows 2000 Professional workstations on two floors of an office building. The company runs a Win2K native mode domain. Oksana is investigating whether she can use the Setup Manager tool to create scripts to support automated installations when deploying these 150 workstations. Which of the following installation types can she complete using an answer file that she created with Setup Manager? (Choose all that apply.)

Question 3
Kalu wants to track use of his Windows 2000 Professional graphics workstation. Kalu suspects that someone is logging on to the computer at night and looking at some of his confidential design proposals. Kalu has local administrator-level access on his machine. His workstation has two hard disks, one for the OS and programs and one for his graphics data.

Kalu uses local Group Policy to enable the auditing of object access. However, when he goes to the graphics data drive to specify which files and folders to audit, Kalu can't find an option to configure auditing. Which of the following is the most likely reason why Kalu can't properly set up auditing on his workstation? (Choose the best answer.)

Kalu didn't enable process tracking. To track system activity such as file access, you must enable process tracking.

Kalu didn't restart the system. You must restart a system before you enable auditing.

Kalu didn't format the graphics data drive with NTFS. Drives must be NTFS to support auditing.

Kalu enabled auditing at the local level. You must enable auditing at the domain level.

Only domain administrators can enable auditing on Win2K Pro workstations.

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WIN 1 YEAR OF MICROSOFT CERTIFICATION EXAMS...FREE!

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5. RESOURCES

CERTTUTOR.NET LIVE! FEATURED THREAD: REAL-WORLD SUPERNETTING

CertTutor.net Live! is the Internet's number-one training and certification discussion board. Each week, CertTutor.net Live! receives thousands of posts about Windows XP, Windows 2000, Cisco, and more. We've selected one of these posts to feature here in CertTutor.net UPDATE. To join in the conversation at CertTutor.net Live!, register at the following URL:
http://www.certtutor.net/registration/index.cfm

The voting has closed in the CertTutor.net nonscientific Instant Poll for the question, "When did you last discover a virus on your personal system?" Here are the results (+/- 2 percent) from the 147 votes:

11%: Within the past week

13%: Within the past month

31%: Within the past year

46%: Never

NEW INSTANT POLL: WINDOWS XP

The next Instant Poll question is, "Are you running Windows XP at home?" Go to the CertTutor.net home page and submit your vote for a) Yes, b) No, but I plan to upgrade soon, or c) No, and I don't plan to upgrade anytime soon.
http://www.certtutor.net

7. NEW AND IMPROVED
(contributed by Carolyn Mader, products@winnetmag.com)